Tuesday, September 23, 2008

It's been awhile. I have started countless posts about nothing and never finish them. However, I have recently been inspired back to blog-dom by a 100-item post which I will now forever refer to as the mother of all blog posts . Jenn's creative list reminded me of all I am thankful for and the fact that Brady's seizure counter hit 100 the other day.

100!

I have to admit that I check my own blog almost every day around 5:00 pm to watch the ticker roll over. I reached a point where I didn't think 10 days seizure free would be possible. I love being proven wrong. In fact, I have been proven wrong a lot lately by this one...

It took awhile but Brady now says "yeah" on a regular basis. He also makes a very dinstict "rmmm-rmmm-rmmmmmm" sound when he sees, hears, or thinks about cars, trucks, planes, school buses, etc. This boy was in heaven watching airport activity from his window seat a few weeks ago.

I have always had confidence that Brady would walk but I have been pretty skeptical on the whole speech issue. It's not that I'm trying to limit him in any way, but his numerous speech evaluations have been pretty tough to swallow so I have attempted to manage my own expectations for Brady in order to plan ahead appropriately. Either way there are a number of communication options out there, and currently we are working on three.

Sign - I love sign language. It's amazing what people can do with this tool and it has proven invaluable in Brady's life up to this point. Hands down, Signing Time is the best resource for babies and kids that we have come across. A recent press release on their website stated they will no longer be airing on PBS so fill up your DVRs, people. And if you have any interest in sign whatsoever, I would strongly recommend purchasing some of their products. The Signing Time folks have produced two more Baby Signing Time DVDs which are geared to babies in particular (and worked great for us as Brady's developmental delays put him in this category for longer than usual). I have been asked to review the new DVDs on our blog which will occur within the next week. Two posts in one month - stop the madness!

PECS - Picture Exchange Communication is new to us. We had to get on board because this is what Brady's pre-school class uses (along with some sign). Brady has learned to pick the appropriate picture and give it to his teacher in order to get something he wants. I though there was NO WAY this would work (even told his teacher this before school started) and, of course, Brady now struts into class each morning and grabs the card for circle time. This system is a lot work to implement so I will post more about it once we become more proficient at home.

Speech - we continue to work on speech through weekly speech therapy. It has been a tough, very slow process but Brady babbles a little more each month. I was reading through Nate's notes from the 1P36 conference in Boston and one of the speakers reminded parents to be patient and that speech may come later down the road. I hope this is the case. If not, we have the other options to fall back on.

We missed the 1P36 conference and I'm really grateful to the other families who have posted information so we can stay informed with what's going on. We are hoping to be there next year - the candidate cities are SLC & Indianapolis which are both closer options for us.